*Near the opposite end of the excitement spectrum from Figcu are "UCLA," the University of California at Los Angeles and "Pitt," the University of Pittsburgh. Both suffered blowout losses last week in college basketball's national championship tournament. UCLA's coach, Ben Howland, may be fired* but last night Pittsburgh extended coach Jamie Dixon's contract by ten years. Howland used to coach at Pitt where Dixon was one of his assistants. Both teams flourished until recently and both coaches are well-regarded but Mr. Dixon's trouble began more suddenly and mysteriously. What happened to Jamie Dixon and his Pitt team can be documented with some precision.
On November 16, 2011 Pitt was the 9th ranked team in the country and played Long Beach State University in Pittsburgh. The game was considered a “tune-up” for Pitt, who almost never lost at home and was heavily favored. Long Beach won 86-76. Pitt then won, against inferior competition, nine games in a row and regained nearly all of its public reputation, climbing back up to 13th in the country. But then it happened again. On December 23 Pitt lost at home to Wagner College—and then lost seven more games in succession. Later in the year Pitt lost another five games in a row. This was inconceivable. This was the most mysterious event in men’s college basketball in the 2011-2012 season. Why had this happened?
Jamie Dixon had lost his team.
The players stopped playing for Dixon as they had for years before. Since that loss to Wagner, Dixon’s won-lost record has been 35-25, 58%. In the eight-plus years prior, Dixon’s won-lost percentage had been 79%.
Why had that happened? I think Jamie Dixon lost his soul, "the animating principle," of his coaching career. Pitt had played in the Big East conference and Jamie Dixon loved the Big East. He recruited the eastern cities, selling tough inner-city high school players on a tough city coach at a tough inner-city university in the best basketball conference in America, and who would play their conference tournament in Madison Square Garden in New York City. As rumors swirled concerning “conference realignment” Jamie Dixon was vocal in opposition. Why would anyone want to leave the Big East? In September, 2011 the University of Pittsburgh administration announced that it was leaving the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference. Jamie Dixon and the school’s other sports coaches were told to keep their mouths shut. They did. Two months later the dismal 2011-2012 basketball season started.
Pitt’s decision to leave the Big East took part of Jamie Dixon’s soul. Recently he joked that he has no relatives in Greensboro, North Carolina, frequent home of the ACC tournament. Dixon is a man who knows what he wants and he had found it at Pitt and in the Big East. He recruited and played his players the way that they played for success in the Big East. And he had found success, winning the Big East three times in nine years.
A man who knows what he wants and who has found it, such a man can be rigid, uncompromising, stubborn. The Atlantic Coast Conference is a very small step down in basketball from the old Big East, which ceased to exist at the end of this season, and is a substantial upgrade academically and in football, the cash-cow of college athletics. Dixon should be able to succeed in the ACC. If he can adapt. Just a little. He will have to learn how to coach against Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams, to beat their systems the way he learned how to beat Jim Boeheim’s 2-3 zone defense. The ACC is not as physically rugged as was the Big East; Dixon may have to successfully recruit more naturally-talented players to beat the bluebloods of Duke and North Carolina. But that may mean recruiting less “coachable” players.
Dixon may have to recruit more players with the pedigree of Khem Birch.
Another event that can be identified precisely in the failed 2011-2012 season is the decision of Khem Birch to leave Pitt and transfer. Birch was the most highly regarded prospect that Jamie Dixon had ever recruited to Pitt. He lasted 1-1 ½ months. On December 16, 2011 it was announced that Khem Birch had left Pitt. On December 23 Pitt lost to Wagner, beginning its eight game losing streak. How can there not be cause and effect there? Khem Birch did not play at Pitt like the McDonald’s All-American that he was, he has not played like a McDonald’s All-American for his new school, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. We know what happened after Khem Birch left but we don’t know precisely why, we don’t know the precise cause. Maybe Jamie Dixon’s soul took another hit. Whatever it took for Dixon to land Birch had been for naught.
A tough inner-city coach at a tough inner-city school can also be a coaching taskmaster. It can wear on the most “coachable” players. Dixon is all of those things. The blueblood talent that Dixon may have to pursue a little more now may be less attuned to a coaching taskmaster. Dixon may have to change his coaching style a little. Or maybe not. Elite, coachable players exist.
The failure to recruit elite talent has always been a justified criticism of Dixon; failure in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament is another. For if Jamie Dixon is to succeed through his contract to 2023 he will have to succeed in the NCAA tournament. Dixon has never made the “Final Four” of that competition much less won it. The two, recruiting and NCAA success, would seem to be related. There is only so much “coaching up” you can do on pedestrian talent; there’s a talent ceiling that you hit and no matter how much a taskmaster the coach is, no matter how prepared he has the players, in the end talent will out. That’s the argument. It is a good argument. But it does not appear to explain NCAA tournament losses to Bradley in 2006, Villanova in 2009, and Xavier in 2010.
Is Dixon even a taskmaster? That implies thoroughly-prepared teams, teams that are perhaps over-prepared, whose players are worn-out by season’s end by the physicality that Dixon demands, by his constant drilling. Yet, one of Pitt’s players said the team “was not prepared” for its game last week against Wichita State. Is that why Pitt lost? Or was it lack of talent? Pitt with less talent than Wichita State?
University of Arizona head coach, and Pitt graduate, Sean Miller said Friday that Jamie Dixon is an “elite” coach. He said coaches know these things. Yes, they do. Coaches also never criticize other coaches (but Miller didn’t say that). Maybe Dixon's team was unprepared by him for Wichita State. It says here though that if that was the case it was one of the few times Jamie Dixon did not have his team prepared.
Maybe Jamie Dixon is just not a great coach, how about that? He is, like the university that employs him, very good, but not great. No. No, we don't permit tautological arguments here, we must try to identify those components of coaching greatness that Jamie Dixon lacks, if he does. Something indeed happened to Pitt and Jamie Dixon in 2011. I think there was a "loss of soul" but the soul is a mutable thing. Dixon seemed to get his soul back this year. 2011 was aberrational. This season was better and the seasons before 2011 were better. Still, with as much excellence as Dixon has produced there have been these failures. Why? The one factor that explains most of the most is recruiting. In nine years only four of Jamie Dixon's players have been drafted into the National Basketball Association. Maybe Jamie Dixon has not had the players, or coached them up, to win at the national level. His focus was always on winning the Big East; win the Big East, the best conference in the land, and the national picture will turn out the same way! That's a good argument, too. It doesn't necessarily follow and it did not follow. Maybe Jamie Dixon could change his coaching style in the ACC just a little. Maybe Dixon could recruit to win the NCAA tournament, not the ACC tournament in Greensboro.
*The beginning of this post has been substantially reworked and is taken from an earlier draft in which Mr. Howland was still the UCLA coach. He has since been fired. March 26, 8 pm. For a story that similarly traces Howland's fall to a precise event and uses similar "soul" language to explain what happened see George Dohrmann, "The Moment Things Started to Unravel for Ben Howland at UCLA," Sports Illustrated, March 25.
On November 16, 2011 Pitt was the 9th ranked team in the country and played Long Beach State University in Pittsburgh. The game was considered a “tune-up” for Pitt, who almost never lost at home and was heavily favored. Long Beach won 86-76. Pitt then won, against inferior competition, nine games in a row and regained nearly all of its public reputation, climbing back up to 13th in the country. But then it happened again. On December 23 Pitt lost at home to Wagner College—and then lost seven more games in succession. Later in the year Pitt lost another five games in a row. This was inconceivable. This was the most mysterious event in men’s college basketball in the 2011-2012 season. Why had this happened?
Jamie Dixon had lost his team.
The players stopped playing for Dixon as they had for years before. Since that loss to Wagner, Dixon’s won-lost record has been 35-25, 58%. In the eight-plus years prior, Dixon’s won-lost percentage had been 79%.
Why had that happened? I think Jamie Dixon lost his soul, "the animating principle," of his coaching career. Pitt had played in the Big East conference and Jamie Dixon loved the Big East. He recruited the eastern cities, selling tough inner-city high school players on a tough city coach at a tough inner-city university in the best basketball conference in America, and who would play their conference tournament in Madison Square Garden in New York City. As rumors swirled concerning “conference realignment” Jamie Dixon was vocal in opposition. Why would anyone want to leave the Big East? In September, 2011 the University of Pittsburgh administration announced that it was leaving the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference. Jamie Dixon and the school’s other sports coaches were told to keep their mouths shut. They did. Two months later the dismal 2011-2012 basketball season started.
Pitt’s decision to leave the Big East took part of Jamie Dixon’s soul. Recently he joked that he has no relatives in Greensboro, North Carolina, frequent home of the ACC tournament. Dixon is a man who knows what he wants and he had found it at Pitt and in the Big East. He recruited and played his players the way that they played for success in the Big East. And he had found success, winning the Big East three times in nine years.
A man who knows what he wants and who has found it, such a man can be rigid, uncompromising, stubborn. The Atlantic Coast Conference is a very small step down in basketball from the old Big East, which ceased to exist at the end of this season, and is a substantial upgrade academically and in football, the cash-cow of college athletics. Dixon should be able to succeed in the ACC. If he can adapt. Just a little. He will have to learn how to coach against Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams, to beat their systems the way he learned how to beat Jim Boeheim’s 2-3 zone defense. The ACC is not as physically rugged as was the Big East; Dixon may have to successfully recruit more naturally-talented players to beat the bluebloods of Duke and North Carolina. But that may mean recruiting less “coachable” players.
Dixon may have to recruit more players with the pedigree of Khem Birch.
Another event that can be identified precisely in the failed 2011-2012 season is the decision of Khem Birch to leave Pitt and transfer. Birch was the most highly regarded prospect that Jamie Dixon had ever recruited to Pitt. He lasted 1-1 ½ months. On December 16, 2011 it was announced that Khem Birch had left Pitt. On December 23 Pitt lost to Wagner, beginning its eight game losing streak. How can there not be cause and effect there? Khem Birch did not play at Pitt like the McDonald’s All-American that he was, he has not played like a McDonald’s All-American for his new school, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. We know what happened after Khem Birch left but we don’t know precisely why, we don’t know the precise cause. Maybe Jamie Dixon’s soul took another hit. Whatever it took for Dixon to land Birch had been for naught.
A tough inner-city coach at a tough inner-city school can also be a coaching taskmaster. It can wear on the most “coachable” players. Dixon is all of those things. The blueblood talent that Dixon may have to pursue a little more now may be less attuned to a coaching taskmaster. Dixon may have to change his coaching style a little. Or maybe not. Elite, coachable players exist.
The failure to recruit elite talent has always been a justified criticism of Dixon; failure in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament is another. For if Jamie Dixon is to succeed through his contract to 2023 he will have to succeed in the NCAA tournament. Dixon has never made the “Final Four” of that competition much less won it. The two, recruiting and NCAA success, would seem to be related. There is only so much “coaching up” you can do on pedestrian talent; there’s a talent ceiling that you hit and no matter how much a taskmaster the coach is, no matter how prepared he has the players, in the end talent will out. That’s the argument. It is a good argument. But it does not appear to explain NCAA tournament losses to Bradley in 2006, Villanova in 2009, and Xavier in 2010.
Is Dixon even a taskmaster? That implies thoroughly-prepared teams, teams that are perhaps over-prepared, whose players are worn-out by season’s end by the physicality that Dixon demands, by his constant drilling. Yet, one of Pitt’s players said the team “was not prepared” for its game last week against Wichita State. Is that why Pitt lost? Or was it lack of talent? Pitt with less talent than Wichita State?
University of Arizona head coach, and Pitt graduate, Sean Miller said Friday that Jamie Dixon is an “elite” coach. He said coaches know these things. Yes, they do. Coaches also never criticize other coaches (but Miller didn’t say that). Maybe Dixon's team was unprepared by him for Wichita State. It says here though that if that was the case it was one of the few times Jamie Dixon did not have his team prepared.
Maybe Jamie Dixon is just not a great coach, how about that? He is, like the university that employs him, very good, but not great. No. No, we don't permit tautological arguments here, we must try to identify those components of coaching greatness that Jamie Dixon lacks, if he does. Something indeed happened to Pitt and Jamie Dixon in 2011. I think there was a "loss of soul" but the soul is a mutable thing. Dixon seemed to get his soul back this year. 2011 was aberrational. This season was better and the seasons before 2011 were better. Still, with as much excellence as Dixon has produced there have been these failures. Why? The one factor that explains most of the most is recruiting. In nine years only four of Jamie Dixon's players have been drafted into the National Basketball Association. Maybe Jamie Dixon has not had the players, or coached them up, to win at the national level. His focus was always on winning the Big East; win the Big East, the best conference in the land, and the national picture will turn out the same way! That's a good argument, too. It doesn't necessarily follow and it did not follow. Maybe Jamie Dixon could change his coaching style in the ACC just a little. Maybe Dixon could recruit to win the NCAA tournament, not the ACC tournament in Greensboro.
*The beginning of this post has been substantially reworked and is taken from an earlier draft in which Mr. Howland was still the UCLA coach. He has since been fired. March 26, 8 pm. For a story that similarly traces Howland's fall to a precise event and uses similar "soul" language to explain what happened see George Dohrmann, "The Moment Things Started to Unravel for Ben Howland at UCLA," Sports Illustrated, March 25.
